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Israeli minister uses onions to shed fake tears +Video

Monday, 06 February 2017 9:10 AM [ Last Update: Monday, 06 February 2017 11:34 AM ]

Israeli Interior Minister Aryeh Deri

Israel’s Interior Minister Aryeh Deri has been caught on camera rubbing onion on his eyes to stimulate tears to eulogize a dead rabbi while filming a 2015 election campaign video.

Deri, who is the leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, was resorting to the old Hollywood trick — as his adviser was heard telling him — to cry for the party’s spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who had died in October 2013.

The footage, aired by Israel’s Channel 2 news, has been leaked by singer Benny Elbaz — a former friend of Deri’s — who is also featured in the video.

An adviser to Deri’s election campaign, Sefi Shaked, acknowledged that he had put forth the onion idea.

“He cried for several hours,” Shaked told the news channel. “I was not satisfied with the results obtained… Eventually, we needed to bring him back to that state of mind.”

Deri was campaigning to win the party’s leadership back then. He first became interior minister at the age of 29, but was forced to resign in September 1993 as he faced charges of corruption. He was convicted of the charges in 1999 and served 22 months in prison.

He was appointed to the post again in January 2016, one month after his predecessor, Silvan Shalom, resigned to face a series of sexual harassment allegations.

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